Saturday, May 16, 2015

HearNotes buds aim to outperform Bluetooth

5/16/2015

There’s no question that Bluetooth headphones can be a welcome convenience. You can take your music, podcasts and audiobooks almost anywhere without the tangle of wires and cables.

But there are trade-offs. Bluetooth compression robs music of some of its fidelity. Some headphones pull power from the host device and you can lose the connection if you wander more that 30 feet from the transmitter.

The developers of HearNotes set out to solve those issues when they developed a new design for wirefree earbuds.

Instead of Bluetooth, the HearNotes system uses KLEER technology, which was developed to stream full CD quality audio to portable devices with lower power demands. The HearNotes transmitter sends out separate independent and uncompressed audio signals to each earpiece.

The transmitter also comes with it’s own power supply so it doesn’t pull from the the source device and it has a coverage range of 50 feet, almost double the range of conventional Bluetooth.

HearNotes currently has a funding campaign on Kickstarter where it has already surpassed its $75,000. Some reward packages are sold out but others that are still available offer discounts off the expected $349 list price when the first units are available in January, 2016.

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Ric Manning

I started reporting on gadgets and gear when Atari ruled electronic games and computers used floppy disks. My weekly column ran in the The Louisville Courier-Journal and online at USAToday.com and ABC News.com. I regularly attend CES, the CEDIA home theater convention and other tech events. You can follow my Twitter posts @ricmanning and contact me at ricman@iglou.com